I work in the aviation industry. This was a good read. The article hinted at the oligopolies that exist in aviation and in practice the industry is incredibly conservative and slow to change (particularly commercial aviation). While new technology is developed all the time, the extreme regulatory oversight combined with so much of the industry relying on long-standing relationships makes it difficult for any new entrant to come into the market. There is also a lot of domain specific knowledge that seems difficult to easily transfer.
For aerospace it's more like asking if Google, Meta, and Apple are encumbered by patents, because they're all big players. The smaller players tend to do one hyper-specific thing for a big player.
Also for aerospace the patents are more legitimate. Software is encumbered by stupid patents <obvious idea> but on a computer! whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop and optimize.
The first engine they used for the J-35 was the RD-33 (designed/built in Russia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimov_RD-33#RD-93 - It was not efficient enough for the J-35 and generated black smoke trails. China decided to design & build a China-based engine.
China has built 50+ J-35 aircraft, and is scaling up production to support their domestic military, and also export orders to other militaries (including Pakistan, and possibly Russia).
This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature.
If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.
I even thought that the example of automobiles proved the jet engine analogy wrong.
Sure, automobiles aren’t as complex as a jet engine, but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants.
Something like 10 years ago we were laughing at videos of Chinese cars spectacularly failing crash tests, and now China is selling to very heavily regulated markets.
High speed rail technology is not a secret. We in the US just don’t have the will. Auto technology in China was acquired via tech transfers. In order to open mfg in China foreign concerns were forced into partnerships with local companies; moreover there was an effort to obtain foreign trade secrets. Metallurgy for jet fans isn’t one of the technologies the west has tried to partner with China. At this time the UK, the US and Russia hold the lead in that technology -maybe France has some too.
> but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants.
I'm not sure China is known for their ICE designs. Like Korea, I suspect China partially pushed hard for EV specifically because the complexity in a battery + motor system is meaningfully simpler than the ICE equivalent and there's relatively little overlap in many facets outside of some first principles.
Jet engines are like ICE, but with a very reliability threshold. ICE is already complicated, but OEMs will accept a certain deviation on reliability if they need to because occurence might be low and severity is manageable. Not so in jet engine design. A single failure is a big deal.
Chinese automakers do (or did) make ICE and hybrid cars, too.
I suspect it's wouldn't have been good strategy to try to build those cars for the US, CA or EU markets. An ICE engine is relatively straightforward, but hitting emissions and fuel efficiency targets is complex. [1] And the future of ICE cars, especially in those markets, is limited... why build out emissions expertise, when you can get your foot in the door with EVs?
[1] I recently bought a 1981 VW Vanagon which I try to maintain. That's a perfect time period to see how emissions control forces engine design. My engine has fuel injection and EGR, but a few years back has the same engine block with a carburetor; california emissions uses the same engine, but adds electronic ignition and an o2 sensor in the exhaust for closed loop injection control. A couple years later and they added water cooling. Every so often emissions and efficiency standards got harder to meet and you have to do more stuff.
Material engineering is the well known blocker for China, same with semiconductors. They basically have to replicate 50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west.
China hasn’t mastered chips either yet in the same way it hasn’t mastered jet turbines: they can do cheap (high yields, low maintenance costs per hour of use), they can do high performance, they can’t do both yet at the same time.
Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen.
It is not the pen, it is the pen tip. Ballpoint pen tips are microscopic tungsten carbide ball held inside ultra-thin steel sockets. So you need cutting tolerances precise to 0.001 millimeters. If the socket is a fraction of a micron too loose, the ink leaks. Too tight, and the pen won't write.
You fell for a meme that was tired years ago already (your link is from 2017, after all). The article itself notes, “Relatively low-value items, like ballpoint pens, have not been a priority”, so obviously this says little about higher-priority military and industrial areas to which the CCP devotes greater effort.
Isn't China currently among the leaders of material science with lots of top 10 universities located in China? [0] (in rankings that do not incorporate prestige but actual scientific output)
All I know is that they produce a lot of engineers, while the US produces a lot gender studies majors. I rarely say it, but I do not foresee much that they won't be leaving us sharply behind on soon, other than poverty and homelessness, which we have pretty well covered.
Can Chinese companies order just the blades from RR or P&W?
I've watched their manufacturing video recently and shocked how much of it was hand labour - it's not something I'd associate with precision. My partner said they must know better tho lol.
But those companies have no commercial interest in supporting a Chinese manufacturer that just wants the blades even without export controls, when they can make much higher margins selling whole engines that must be maintained using their parts (in practice variants of the engines destined for COMAC also omit some of the IP that finds its way onto Airbus and Boeing because you can help a customer too much...)
While I think the scale of American decline is overstated, I think there is a degree of Hemingway's law of motion.
A desired task that requires the most skilled makes those skilled people in demand. If a power has significantly more resources then they have more to offer those most skilled people.
It isn't at all disputed that there are a huge number of scientific discoveries that have occurred in The USA by people born outside the USA. That shows the draw of that power, but it is a relative draw. As the ratio becomes smaller the draw is less.
Advances like this are a feedback mechanism, being ahead gives you more resources to stay ahead.
If you consider the average contribution of advances to be a relatively steady force advancing a nation, yet a nation is in decline, it stands to reason that the decline is in another area and is being mitigated by the advances.
If the force propping things up goes somewhere else the change can be quite swift because the force of the decline becomes suddenly much more apparent.
I don't see the world going full Mad Max, but I can certainly see a sudden shift to the USA being considered no different to the UK,Japan, or Germany.
“America is in decline” is the consensus view. America dominating on all fronts is the contrarian view. I expect these views to swing like a pendulum in public discussion until something meaningful happens or until it’s clear in the rearview that America is in fact is more like UK, Japan, or Germany.
IDK if the WS-15 failed or is "two decades" behind. I think we just don't know, but we do know that it is that they have achieved the ability to deliver, in mass, third-generation single-crystal nickel-based superalloys. That's a strong proof point.
As for commercial, China can/has grant a sizable portion of the C919 to domestic engine producers ( I think AECC has this contract ) that allows for a lot of capital and practice.
I would not be shocked if China demonstrates highly competitive engines in the late 2020, maybe with a few setbacks and iterations. I would also not be shocked if they started demonstrating engines with some characteristics slightly better than the Western manufactures in that time period (or maybe a little later).
Can you please make your substantive points without breaking the site guidelines? You broke quite a few of them with this post.
You're welcome to express your views thoughtfully, but not aggressively. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Also for aerospace the patents are more legitimate. Software is encumbered by stupid patents <obvious idea> but on a computer! whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop and optimize.
There is a section about its engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-35#Engines
The first engine they used for the J-35 was the RD-33 (designed/built in Russia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimov_RD-33#RD-93 - It was not efficient enough for the J-35 and generated black smoke trails. China decided to design & build a China-based engine.
This is the engine for the early J-35 prototype, WS-13 built in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou_WS-13
This is the production engine for J-35, the WS-19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou_WS-19
China has built 50+ J-35 aircraft, and is scaling up production to support their domestic military, and also export orders to other militaries (including Pakistan, and possibly Russia).
Interesting: This is China's latest aircraft carrier, which has electromagnetic catapults, instead of steam-based: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Fujia...
You can see videos of the J-35 aircraft here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLdCNAUjuRI
If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.
Sure, automobiles aren’t as complex as a jet engine, but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants.
Something like 10 years ago we were laughing at videos of Chinese cars spectacularly failing crash tests, and now China is selling to very heavily regulated markets.
Same deal with things like high speed rail.
I'm not sure China is known for their ICE designs. Like Korea, I suspect China partially pushed hard for EV specifically because the complexity in a battery + motor system is meaningfully simpler than the ICE equivalent and there's relatively little overlap in many facets outside of some first principles.
Jet engines are like ICE, but with a very reliability threshold. ICE is already complicated, but OEMs will accept a certain deviation on reliability if they need to because occurence might be low and severity is manageable. Not so in jet engine design. A single failure is a big deal.
I suspect it's wouldn't have been good strategy to try to build those cars for the US, CA or EU markets. An ICE engine is relatively straightforward, but hitting emissions and fuel efficiency targets is complex. [1] And the future of ICE cars, especially in those markets, is limited... why build out emissions expertise, when you can get your foot in the door with EVs?
[1] I recently bought a 1981 VW Vanagon which I try to maintain. That's a perfect time period to see how emissions control forces engine design. My engine has fuel injection and EGR, but a few years back has the same engine block with a carburetor; california emissions uses the same engine, but adds electronic ignition and an o2 sensor in the exhaust for closed loop injection control. A couple years later and they added water cooling. Every so often emissions and efficiency standards got harder to meet and you have to do more stuff.
Mainly copies of Japanese and US designs.
China hasn’t mastered chips either yet in the same way it hasn’t mastered jet turbines: they can do cheap (high yields, low maintenance costs per hour of use), they can do high performance, they can’t do both yet at the same time.
Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114
Source from al-Arabiya: https://english.alarabiya.net/variety/2017/01/14/At-last-Chi...
The point (no pun intended) is that China was beginning to crack the processes for making the precision machine tools that make machine tools.
[0] https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/
I've watched their manufacturing video recently and shocked how much of it was hand labour - it's not something I'd associate with precision. My partner said they must know better tho lol.
But those companies have no commercial interest in supporting a Chinese manufacturer that just wants the blades even without export controls, when they can make much higher margins selling whole engines that must be maintained using their parts (in practice variants of the engines destined for COMAC also omit some of the IP that finds its way onto Airbus and Boeing because you can help a customer too much...)
Do you have a better source?
A desired task that requires the most skilled makes those skilled people in demand. If a power has significantly more resources then they have more to offer those most skilled people.
It isn't at all disputed that there are a huge number of scientific discoveries that have occurred in The USA by people born outside the USA. That shows the draw of that power, but it is a relative draw. As the ratio becomes smaller the draw is less.
Advances like this are a feedback mechanism, being ahead gives you more resources to stay ahead.
If you consider the average contribution of advances to be a relatively steady force advancing a nation, yet a nation is in decline, it stands to reason that the decline is in another area and is being mitigated by the advances.
If the force propping things up goes somewhere else the change can be quite swift because the force of the decline becomes suddenly much more apparent.
I don't see the world going full Mad Max, but I can certainly see a sudden shift to the USA being considered no different to the UK,Japan, or Germany.
IDK if the WS-15 failed or is "two decades" behind. I think we just don't know, but we do know that it is that they have achieved the ability to deliver, in mass, third-generation single-crystal nickel-based superalloys. That's a strong proof point.
As for commercial, China can/has grant a sizable portion of the C919 to domestic engine producers ( I think AECC has this contract ) that allows for a lot of capital and practice.
I would not be shocked if China demonstrates highly competitive engines in the late 2020, maybe with a few setbacks and iterations. I would also not be shocked if they started demonstrating engines with some characteristics slightly better than the Western manufactures in that time period (or maybe a little later).
You're welcome to express your views thoughtfully, but not aggressively. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.